An Afghan National Army soldier keeps watch at a checkpoint on the Ghazni highway in Afghanistan on August 12, 2018.
Mohammad Ismail/Reuters

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Welcome to “Global Conflict This Week,” a series that highlights developments in conflicts across the world that you might have missed this week. Stay up to date on these conflicts and others with the online interactive, the Global Conflict Tracker, from the Center for Preventive Action (CPA).

Major Taliban Offensive Targets Ghazni in Afghanistan

More than two hundred Afghan soldiers and officers died last weekend while fighting Taliban militants on four fronts. The southeastern city of Ghazni suffered the highest death toll. By Tuesday, militants withdrew from several locations within the city after setting government buildings on fire. However, they took control of rural areas in the province surrounding Ghazni.

On Wednesday, a suicide attack on an education center in western Kabul killed at least thirty-four people and wounded dozens of others. The Taliban denied responsibility for the attack.

Separately, the Taliban said it will no longer grant safe passage to Red Cross employees in Afghanistan and accused the organization of failing to support Taliban inmates in Kabul’s Pul-e-Charkhi prison.

At least thirty-six people, including a dozen children, were reportedly killed Monday in a residential building in rebel-held Idlib Governorate. The building was believed to house ammunition and weapons as well as civilians, according to a UK-based monitoring group.

A UN report released Monday found that between twenty and thirty thousand Islamic State militants remain in Syria and Iraq.

Ukraine said one of its soldiers was killed and three others injured in clashes with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv and separatists accused each other of violating a ceasefire during the previous twenty-four hours.